The Oil Pollution Act (OPA) of 1990, passed in the wake of the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska, was designed to improve the nation’s ability to respond to such disasters. It expanded the government’s authority and imposed strict liability on responsible parties, meaning the government does not have to prove negligence to hold them accountable for removal costs and damages.

The government could fire BP, but if they hired somebody else to come in, we the taxpayers would have to fund that upfront. BP is operating on its own nickel. So there’s a tremendous financial benefit to having BP do the work, as long as it’s doing the work in a way that is satisfactory to the government.

There’s concern that the technology hasn’t evolved since the Exxon Valdez spill 20 years ago. We’re still using skimmers and booms. Under the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund that was set up under OPA, some money was supposed to go to research, but we haven’t seen any significant results.

The federal government must assess the damage to get properly compensated. It has to prove which damages were caused by this specific oil, so you need a baseline. If you see a decline in fish populations, you need evidence it was not due to fishing, for example. We need to do a better job studying ocean health.

There must be air monitoring in places workers could be exposed to toxins. Without data, we can’t show what’s causing health problems, which is what we saw after Exxon Valdez. A lot of people were getting sick, but they couldn’t prove what was causing it.